FOOSE: Well I think I have 22 or 24 vehicles, I mean, my wife, Lynne, and me.
SRM: Where are the rest of the cars?
FOOSE: Hidden away. Some at the shop, some stored away.
SRM: What do you own that is non-hot rod?
FOOSE: An '05 F150, three '07 F150s, that are all over the country right now, one of them is the show truck, the Foose F-150, which is being shown to dealers, the other two are prototype vehicles. One is in Detroit on a shaker being shaken to death to make sure if something is going to fail they'll catch it. Eibach has done all the suspension to lower it as a production vehicle through Ford so they have to pass tests. So they're trying to destroy one of my trucks right now. And the third one is at Billy and Ernie's shop, which is 3D Carbon, who is building the body kit for it. And doing all the final fit. I've got the Hemisfear parked over at Metalcrafters, and across the street from my shop there's a building with my '70 Cuda in it, I've got Lynne's 54 Corvette over at Metalcrafters, which was my daily driver for a couple of months--it was a lot of fun. It had the straight six in it. A '69 Camaro at the shop, plus the Dodge Viper pickup SRT/10 truck, a '34 roadster that's in a box. Plus three '56 Ford pickups.
SRM: How large is your Huntington Beach shop now?
FOOSE: Too small. It's like 5,000 square feet, but we just bought the building next door so we'll have 10,000 feet soon.
SRM: How many guys do you have working in the shop right now?
FOOSE: Just seven of us. Lynne Stout in the office, me, my wife, Lynne, Carson Lev, who heads up licensing, Andy Wallin, Carl Jonasson, Pete Morell, Andrew Pettersen, and Jake Bailey.
SRM: When someone thinks they want to build a Ridler contender type of vehicle and they have the bank account and the ego to do something like that, what's the first thing you tell them?
FOOSE: I try and talk them out of it.
SRM: Do people just not understand to what depths need to be taken to get a car capable of not only competing but actually winning an award like that? The steps that need to be taken to compete at that level?
FOOSE: We don't look at it that way. If someone comes in and they want to build a car and go and compete for the Ridler, you can't say "Okay, we'll build a car and go win the Ridler." All we can do is compete, but there are different levels of competing. There's: Do you want to go and try and get into the Great 8 or do you want to go and attempt to win it? If you want to win it, you have to go and look at every single component on that car or every piece of that car, whether it is covered up or in plain sight, you need to finish it like that is the piece that will make the difference of you winning that award or not. And when you treat every single component that way, and it starts with the frame rails, there are parts of the car that may go together and come apart a hundred times before a car is finished, so everything has to be gapped and fit and the hours to do that are endless. If someone comes in and says they want to compete at that level, my initial response is going to be is to scare them away from it. I'll tell them it's going to cost $3-million dollars to compete and hopefully it doesn't cost that much, but they need to be willing to spend that much, but hopefully we'll come in around $1-million. We never know where we're going to end up, or where technology is going to allow you to go, but what we want is the freedom to create the absolutely best car we can.
SRM: A lot of hot rodders would be astonished to learn . . .
FOOSE: Well it's not a hot rod. I don't look at it as a hot rod. It may have some hot rod styling cues, but my goal is to create a piece of artwork that will have a value of its own. It's not a hot rod like any other hot rod out there. This is going to be a one-off car. Every single component on that car is built for that car. You're not ordering hot rod parts and bolting them on. That's a different level.
SRM: How many hours go into a car intending it for the Ridler or the AMBR?
FOOSE: The last one was, I believe, 22,000 hours. Time and materials, and we'll build a car for you (smiling).
SRM: Your shop rate is what nowadays?
FOOSE: I think our shop rate is $85 an hour.
SRM: What would the wait be on having you build a car right now for someone?
FOOSE: Right now I try and stay flexible enough to be able to take advantage of new opportunities. We tell people we have a three or four year backlog, but if they were really serious for a Ridler contender type of car, I could probably start on that in about six months at any time
SRM: How many cars do have going together right now?
FOOSE: We only have four in the shop
SRM: How many of those Ridler contenders?
FOOSE: Only one. The Bob Smith car. We're approaching it like we're going there with this car, but it's still up to Bob if he wants to take it to that level.
SRM: But the sooner the decision is made the better, right?
FOOSE: Right, but we're treating every decision we're making now like it is based on that. If he does change his mind, it will be really easy to finish that car to a lesser level, but to start building it at a lesser level it's a lot more expensive to turn back around and go the other way. Oh, and the rear end in the P32--the Halibrand--it came from Bob Smith and he donated it to the project.
SRM: What do you think about the prevalence of rat rods and the perceived decline in smoothie rods?
FOOSE: My comment would be that I've never seen a better time for street rodding or hot rodding or whatever you want to call it. Because what I see right now, well, back in the '30s or '40s when this all started, and in the '50s there was the custom era, what people were doing was buying the components that were available to increase the horsepower or whatnot. There was very little fabrication as most of it was bolt-on parts. I would say in the '60s is when you started to see mag wheels and that's when you had either a '50s kind of car or a '60s kind of car and everybody was like, hey, you've got to update your car, then the '70s hit and you've got to update your car, and in the '80s, when the billet thing hit, if you had a car from the '70s you needed to update it. Now it's where you're looking back to the '50s era and it's cool. From the '60s it's cool. From '70s it's cool. But it's the building and blending of all these styles and eras that's cool.